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Jonathan Robie wrote:
> Let me try to explain why I think named typing is good. Here's a function:
>
> define function get-total( element invoice $i )
> returns xs:decimal
> {
> sum( $i//item/price )
> }
>
> This function assumes that the invoices it takes have been validated as
> invoice elements according to some schema
Wrong. This function assumes that <price> has some numeric type and can
meaningfully be summed. The type has presumably been identified to the
xquery engine using XSchema vocabulary, presumably as xs:decimal. The
presumption that a schema validation operation has actually taken place
is without evidence - in a large proportion of cases the data has
probably been generated programmatically and flowed straight into a
database, no angle-brackets in evidence anywhere.
I'm really feeling uneasy - a lot of people whom I consider to be smart
seem to be participating consensually in the belief that data types are
organically tied to the validation process, which to me seems
empirically just nutty.
> At run-time,
> you don't want to have to test every function parameter to see if it
> corresponds to a schema, you simply want to ensure that the validator
> has said this corresponds to the appropriate definition.
It depends; if the data being queried is actually XML, when you
encounter the string of characters that ostensibly represent <price>
you're going to have to convert them to a number to do arithmetic, and
if you don't have exception handling logic surrounding this process
you're just being lazy and stupid - so it's not clear that you ever
escape the process of "validation". If on the other hand this is
actually something that is known to be an integer and thus stored in a C
or Java "int", you couldn't test it against a schema anyhow because it's
no longer XML. So arguments claiming that static typing is good because
it bypasses runtime validation are basically without merit.
Having said that, I'm not in Uche's "static typing is evil" camp :)
And named types do seem awfully convenient, so I'm really not
disagreeing with Jonathan's main point at all. -Tim
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